Dan Cox’s Gubernatorial Encore: A Master Class in Political Delusion

TOPICS:
This is a screenshot of Dan Cox's nonexistent 2026 gubernatorial website, leftover from his failed 2024 congressional campaign.

Posted By: Ryan Miner January 31, 2026

The man who lost by 32 points, organized buses to January 6, and got rejected by his own party thinks Maryland voters will give him a second chance

Dan Cox filed for governor on Friday, January 30.

Again.

Let that sink in for a moment.

The man who suffered the most catastrophic gubernatorial defeat in modern Maryland Republican history – losing to Wes Moore by a staggering 32.4 percentage points in 2022 – apparently looked at that wreckage and thought, “I should do this again.”

This is not political courage.

This is not persistence in the face of adversity.

This is a man so profoundly detached from political reality that he makes Don Quixote look like a strategic genius.

The 2022 Election Results: Maryland Voters Rejected the Cox Platform

In November 2022, Wes Moore captured 64.5% of the vote.

Dan Cox managed 32.1%.

Moore received 1,293,944 votes; Cox got 644,000.

Moore outraised Cox by a ratio of ten to one.

The final margin – more than 649,000 votes – wasn’t a defeat.

Maryland’s 2022 gubernatorial contest wasn’t even a close call. Cox lost by more than two to one in a state where Republicans have, in fact, won gubernatorial elections.

And it gets worse.

After Cox’s 2022 humiliation, he decided to run for Congress in Maryland’s 6th District in 2024. He lost that primary too – to Neil Parrott, with Cox managing only 30.1% of the vote.

Even Republican primary voters in his own backyard decided they’d had enough of him.

Let’s count the Cox losses:

  • Congress in 2016 (crushed by Jamie Raskin).
  • Governor in 2022 (obliterated by Moore).
  • Congress in 2024 (rejected by MD-06 Republican primary voters).

And now, somehow, Dan Cox is back for more punishment.

From January 6th to the Proud Boys: Dan Cox’s Controversial Record

For those who need a refresher on why Dan Cox is uniquely unsuited for public office, let’s review the highlight reel.

January 6, 2021 | Dan Cox’s Inssurection Bus Tour

Dan Cox organized buses to transport his District 4 constituents (and other Marylanders) to the “Stop the Steal” rally in Washington, D.C. – the rally that preceded the violent assault – the insurrection – on the United States Capitol.

Where was Dan Cox on January 6, 2021? We know he was in D.C., but where was he?

As rioters smashed windows and hunted for lawmakers to harm physically, Dan Cox was on Twitter (now X) at 3:21 p.m. declaring, “Pence is a traitor.”

This is a copy of Dan Cox's tweet calling former Vice President Mike Pence a traitor during the January 6, 2021, Capitol Insurrection.

Cox later tried to explain this away as a “poor choice of words” born from the emotion of the moment.

But the timestamp tells you everything: he called the Vice President of the United States a traitor while an armed mob was storming the Capitol based on the lie that Pence could overturn the election.

Dan Cox called Mike Pence a traitor

An armed, angry mob of lunatics and degenerates that wanted to murder the former Vice President of the United States.

Dan Cox was front and center in that fight.

Dan Cox’s Proud Boys

At Mr. Cox’s 2022 primary victory party – the night he clinched the Republican nomination – Cox was captured on video accepting a gift from a young man wearing a Proud Boys polo shirt who explicitly identified himself as representing “Maryland Proud Boys.”

Cox shook his hand, accepted the gift (a comb), and asked the man’s name.

This is a photograph of 2026 Maryland Gubernatorial candidate Dan Cox accepting a gift from a Proud Boys member in 2022.

The Proud Boys, for the uninitiated, have been designated a terrorist organization by Canada and New Zealand. Members have been convicted of seditious conspiracy for their roles in the January 6 insurrection.

Cox’s defense?

He claimed he couldn’t hear well in the “noise of the victory celebration.”

Dan Cox’s Gab Problem

Before winning his 2022 primary, Dan Cox maintained more than 1,000 posts on Gab – a social media platform that has served as a haven for white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and antisemitic content.

The site gained national attention after investigators linked the Pittsburgh synagogue shooter to antisemitic remarks on the platform.

After winning Maryland’s 2022 gubernatorial Republican primary, Mr. Cox deleted his Gab account and refused to discuss its contents.

Dan Cox’s Chinese Communist Conspiracy Theories

Cox accused Governor Larry Hogan – a fellow Republican – of having “backroom dealings” with the Chinese Communist Party.

This is about a governor whose administration included Republicans who later supported moderate candidates, and whose COVID response was praised by public health officials.

The QAnon Candidate for Governor

Dan Cox spoke at a QAnon-heavy conference in Pennsylvania in early 2022, appearing alongside other figures who trafficked in conspiracy theories.

Unlike former Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, Dan Cox still hasn’t denounced the QAnon conspiracy theory.

Governor Hogan’s response was unequivocal: he called Cox a “QAnon whackjob“- a descriptor that came from the sitting Republican governor of Maryland, not a Democratic attack ad.

Dan Cox’s 2020 Impeachment Stunt

In February 2022, while running for governor, Dan Cox introduced articles of impeachment against then-Governor Larry Hogan over COVID-19 restrictions.

The House Rules and Executive Nominations Committee unanimously told him to go away.

Doug Mayer, a senior adviser to Kelly Schulz’s failed 2022 gubernatorial primary campaign, captured the absurdity perfectly: “Dan Cox is what happens when crazy meets stupid.

A person who believes that Mike Pence is a traitor and that the Chinese Communist Party has infiltrated Maryland state government is not a rational actor.”

What Changed for Dan Cox Since 2022?

Nothing favorable to Dan Cox.

Maryland has, if anything, become more hostile territory for MAGA candidates.

In 2024, Kamala Harris carried the state by 29 points.

Democrats hold supermajorities in both chambers of the General Assembly; they control every statewide office and seven of eight congressional seats. The Democratic Governors Association spent more than $1 million boosting Cox in the 2022 primary specifically because they considered him the easiest candidate to defeat.

That strategy worked spectacularly.

Larry Hogan – the only Republican with the stature and crossover appeal to potentially make a race competitive – announced last week he won’t challenge Wes Moore in 2026 to reclaim his old job.

That decision effectively cleared the field of any Republican who might have given Moore a serious challenge.

Instead, the GOP field now includes Ed Hale Sr., a retired bank executive, and assorted lesser-known candidates. Maybe Maryland State Senator Steve Hershey will run for governor this year?

The political environment hasn’t improved for Cox. In fact, the climate is devastatingly worse for him. His personal baggage hasn’t disappeared, and his electoral track record has actually gotten worse.

So what, exactly, is the theory of the case here?

The Rob Krop Factor: Federal Machine Gun Charges and Legal Failures

Dan Cox listed Frederick County gun shop owner Rob Krop as his running mate for lieutenant governor.

That name might ring a bell for Frederick County observers: Krop is a firearms business owner who, alongside Frederick County Sheriff Chuck Jenkins, was charged by federal prosecutors with conspiracy and making false statements to acquire machine guns.

Mr. Cox represented Krop in that federal case; his legal filings were… characteristic. He alleged the indictment was “politically motivated” and questioned the Ukrainian citizenship of the lead ATF agent.

This is a photograph of Dan Cox and his gubernatorial running mate Rob Krop of Frederick, Maryland.

If you have ever read Dan Cox’s legal filings, you’ll quickly ask, “How did he graduate from even a tier four law school?” Yes, they are that awful.

Sheriff Jenkins’s attorneys actually criticized Cox’s motion for employing “inconsistent, even hostile, defense strategies.”

A judge dismissed the original federal indictment for speedy-trial violations, and although prosecutors filed new charges, a jury acquitted Mr. Krop in October 2024.

Whatever the legal merits, pairing yourself with a defendant in a federal machine gun conspiracy case is undoubtedly “a choice” for a gubernatorial campaign.

The Delusion of a True Dan Cox Believer

What drives a candidate to keep running despite overwhelming evidence that voters don’t want him?

Mr. Cox appears to believe several things that are demonstrably false:

  • The 2020 U.S. presidential election was stolen, and Trump won (he didn’t).
  • Those COVID-19 restrictions were a tyrannical overreach that required impeachment.
  • That Republican voters in Maryland are secretly MAGA enthusiasts being suppressed by the party establishment.

Dan Cox is someone who exists in an alternate political reality. And while that reality has adherents, they are not numerous enough in Maryland to win a statewide election.

The 2022 results proved that beyond any reasonable doubt.

Maryland Republican Party Strategy: A Gift to Wes Moore?

No Republican will beat Wes Moore in this fall’s gubernatorial general-election matchup.

Wes Moore will win re-election handily. Again, no Republican has any shot whatsoever at beating Wes Moore.

Dan Cox’s entry into the 2026 race is a gift to Maryland Democrats and a nightmare for any Maryland Republican who hopes to rebuild the party’s statewide competitiveness.

When Cox won the 2022 primary, Doug Mayer of the Schulz campaign told The New York Times: “The Maryland Republican Party got together and committed ritualized mass suicide.”

Four years later, the party apparently wants to try that ritual again.

There was a path for Maryland Republicans; Larry Hogan proved it. The path required candidates who could appeal to the state’s moderate, educated suburban voters – the same voters who have made Montgomery and Howard counties Democratic strongholds.

That moderate Republican path required distancing entirely from the far-right extremist MAGA wing of the Republican Party without completely alienating base voters. It required competence, pragmatism, and the ability to talk about kitchen-table issues without veering into conspiracy theories.

Dan Cox is the opposite of all of that.

He is a walking, talking Democratic attack ad. Every controversial statement, every fringe association, every QAnon conference appearance – it’s all documented, all searchable, all ready to be deployed in advertising.

The Good News: Dan Cox Will Lose Badly – And It Will Be Fun To Watch

The good news: Dan Cox will not be Maryland’s next governor. He’ll never be governor of any state (ever).

How much damage does Dan Cox inflict on the Maryland GOP’s brand and down-ballot candidates while losing by double digits for the third consecutive statewide race?

Most normal Marylanders would look at a 32-point defeat and learn from it. They reassess their positions, reconsider their approach, and acknowledge that voters have spoken.

But Dan Cox looked at a 32-point loss and decided the problem was that voters just hadn’t heard enough from him.

There’s a word for that—several words, actually: denial, delusion, and a fundamental unseriousness about the democratic process.

Friday’s filing wasn’t a campaign launch.

Cox’s round-two gubernatorial campaign launch is a cry into the void from a man who has confused notoriety with qualification and stubbornness with principle. Maryland voters rejected Dan Cox decisively in 2022. Republican primary voters rejected him in 2024.

But here we are, watching a man set himself on fire in slow motion, convinced the flames are actually a spotlight.

Fact-Check Summary

Multiple news sources document all factual claims in this analysis, including:

Related Articles